


Sleep Undefended

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-19 21:00:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17009121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: “I should let you get on,” Peter says. His smile shows all his teeth, like the posters at the dentist’s, except that his reaches his eyes. It’s still not an expression that Martin wants to join in with. “Lots to do, and I imagine you’ll be wanting to go back to the Archivist before the day’s out.”





	Sleep Undefended

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alias (anafabula)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/gifts).



The Archives are changed. Martin had known that long before he had gone back there, so when he walks in and sees it, there’s no reason why it should feel quite so much like someone’s taken a hammer to his diaphragm.

Unsteady, he wavers into a chair, then wonders why he’d ever thought that that would help. All it does is grant him a better view of the place that’s the problem, make him smaller in the face of it.

He could leave, he thinks, but he’d still know it was there. His mind would sketch a phantom of this place - the filing cabinets and the cobwebs and the silence - over Jon’s hospital room, over his flat, over any midnight street he chose. He can’t hide from it, can’t distract himself from it, not when there’s no Melanie, still too angry about Elias’ arrest to want to talk to him, and no Basira, still picking through the rubble for some trace of Daisy, quietly refusing any help he offers.

No Sasha. No Tim. No Jon.

The desk opposite Martin’s is empty. It shouldn’t be. It’s the same one - he recognises the patterns of it, knows the shape and the whorls in the wood - but it’s been cleared. Just a blank surface. _Neat_ , his mother would have said, had said. No sign of last year’s desk calendar, never replaced, or the mugs and the marks they’d left on the table, or the paper clips that he’d sworn he could pick locks with.

Sasha’s desk - Melanie’s now - had never really been emptied, had been emptied long before Martin knew it. He had no way of knowing if the way that that monster had liked its desk bore any resemblance to Sasha’s. But Tim, he remembers. He knows Tim’s desk like he knows his own. This is just a pristine reminder that Tim is never coming back.

Martin hauls himself to his feet, and walks around the offending piece of furniture in a wide, numb circle. There’s no box, half-packed, sitting on the chair. It’s all gone already. Tim has been neatly tidied away.

He wrenches open one of the drawers, searching for anything of Tim’s that had been missed, for proof of existence. All he finds is the spot where Tim had carved his initials on the bottom panel, sanded down, and his brain stutters out on the absence.

Martin had been there when he’d scratched them into place, just after they’d been reassigned from Research - _consigned_ , Tim had said, jokingly, to do battle with Gertrude Robinson’s shoddy filing until they found their eventual end through paper cuts and monotony. He’d watched him do it from his own desk, tried to join in with the smile, but been too sure that Jon or Elias would come striding in to properly lose his frown. Tim had finished his work, and leaned down to blow the sawdust away. His eyes had flicked up towards Martin, over the space between them, and he’d offered to do his initials too. Martin had refused, knowing that if he did, Jon would find them, and that he had neither Tim’s charm nor his luck.

Martin retreats to his own desk, and rummages until he finds the knife he’d long ago discarded in favour of the corkscrew, buried under notebooks and forgotten boiled sweets and pens that didn’t work anymore but that he’d held out enough hope for to keep.

He starts to etch the letters back, biting at his lip and holding his breath in an effort to keep his hand steady, because he has to get the angles exactly right. Once he’s done there, he thinks, he’ll carve their names out in full into the underside of his own desk, into the shelves, into the low and high places in the walls, anywhere he can. _Tim Stoker. Sasha James._ Maybe one day, someone will add his to theirs, and let the three of them be together again.

He’ll find pictures, he decides - he must have some, somewhere, a careless moment from a Christmas party, or that time that Tim had invited them all out for his birthday and Martin had been so surprised that he nearly hadn’t gone, or when Sasha, the real Sasha, had been testing out her new phone’s camera filters - and he’ll make copies, as many copies as his digital and physical storage will allow, he’ll do everything that he can to stop this, this-

 _Damnatio memoriae_ , an errant corner of his brain supplies, in Jon’s voice, because he’s the only one Martin has ever heard say it.

The knife slips. Martin swears as the blade catches his hand, snatching it away before he can stain the drawer.

“I have to say, when Elias mentioned that you’d been damaging Institute property, I didn’t think he meant the furniture.”

Martin whirls around so fast that a few droplets of blood land on the boards a few metres away. The cleaners will get it later. They’ve had practice.

Peter Lukas is standing against Martin’s desk. He looks as though he’s trying for casual, hands aware only of his pockets, but there’s still far too much of the apex predator about him for it to look anything but false.

Somehow, Martin’s anger finds the route to his mouth before his fear, past the boiling point it’s been simmering at - ever-self-directed, ever-ineffectual - since before the others had gone to the House of Wax.

“What happened to his things?” he demands, and his face feels raw, trembling like a snarling dog’s. “You’ve had his desk cleared out - why? It’s not even been a week. And his name - you can’t, you can’t do that! I’m not going to let you pretend that he was never-”

Martin’s brain abruptly catches up with itself, and reminds him that Peter Lukas is a _monster_ , a creature made of something that’s been trying to collapse Martin in on himself since he was barely old enough to put a name to the feeling. And he hasn’t said anything. He’s just standing there, watching.

Martin opens his mouth again, but nothing comes out.

“Sorry,” Peter says, flashes a smile that’s almost sheepish. “Could you repeat that?”

“You…” Martin swallows, struggling to pretend at something that he’d been completely only moments ago. “You weren’t _listening_?”

“It’s not that I wasn’t listening, Martin.” Peter inhales for a long moment, swaying with it ever so slightly, holds a blink like he’s hearing a distant melody. It’s only the sound of his breath that makes Martin realise that he’s standing far too close, near enough that he can probably pick up the hospital smell that Martin can never quite get out of his clothes. He tries to take a step back, but Tim’s desk is in the way, open drawer boxing him in. “It’s that it’s very hard to concentrate on what you’re saying.”

“I… I don’t…?”

“‘Course you don’t,” Peter shakes his head, like he’s trying to rid himself of an indulgence. “Don’t expect you to. What were you asking about?”

“Tim’s things.” Martin has to force the words, and they come out flat.

“I had them moved to the storage room,” Peter says, easily. “Didn’t see much point keeping them around. I expect they’re still there, if you’d like to look through them. I was going to have Daisy’s personal effects moved too, but I really can’t tell what’s hers and what’s Basira’s, and she hasn’t been around to ask.” He takes a slight step forward, angling himself so that he can gesture at a stack of files that he’s left on Martin’s in tray. “In the meantime, I found you some statements to record. I understand that Elias usually decides which ones end up being read, so I had a word with him about it.”

“Sure,” Martin says. There’s something in his chest that’s sure he should be worried about that, that if Peter’s just taking his cues from Elias anyway then what had the point been, but it’s nothing to the instinct that has him press himself noticeably back into Tim’s desk, and it’s lost in his need to shrink. “I suppose - I should get on with that, then, should I?”

He waits for Peter to move back. Peter doesn’t. Stands there, keeps watching with that same look on his face. A tide unreceding, impassable.

“Excuse me?” Martin tries. He considers the gaps on either side of Peter, but they’re too narrow for him and probably ninety percent of the rest of the population, and besides, he knows he can’t get that close - the idea of going closer of his own volition makes something at the back of his teeth go cold.

Peter raises his eyebrows, prompting Martin to go on. If he gestures with his hands again, Martin thinks, his fingers will skim his jumper. Tim’s desk shifts, slightly, and he flinches.

“I…” he starts, but he can’t think how to finish the sentence. Hadn’t even known where he was meaning to go with it when he opened his mouth. He’s already asked him to move, and he hasn’t. Anything else will be a challenge, and, after the last time, Martin’s going to be leaving antagonising the monsters to someone else for the foreseeable future.

“I should let you get on,” Peter says. His smile shows all his teeth, like the posters at the dentist’s, except that his reaches his eyes. It’s still not an expression that Martin wants to join in with. “Lots to do, and I imagine you’ll be wanting to go back to the Archivist before the day’s out.”

Martin’s face grows hot, and he hates it for it.

“How is he getting on, by the way?” Peter asks, leaning forward, straight into Martin’s space, a facsimile of interest. Prodding. He _knows_ , of course he knows. Elias knows. As soon as Jon wakes up, he’ll know, too, and that’ll be the worst of it.

“No change,” Martin says. Tim’s desk digs awkward, painful patterns into his back.

“Have you been talking to him?” Peter’s trying for encouraging, Martin thinks, but there’s an undercurrent of something a little too like hunger. “I’ve heard that that’s supposed to help with coma patients.”

“He’s not in a coma.” Martin shakes his head, struggling to think past the warring impulses to get _away_ even if it means toppling Tim’s desk in the process, and to not interfere with it any more than it already has been, as though there’s something of his friend left in the impressions the legs leave on the floorboards. “Tim’s things - I’d like to take them, if no one else claims them.”

“That’s fine,” Peter says, and far from losing interest at the topic change, the wrinkles at his eyes seem to deepen. “Feel free to take anything you want, though if you could leave anything that’s clearly Institute Property.”

“Sure,” Martin says, and tries to think about the five or six staplers that Tim had stolen from Research, rather than about defining _Institute Property_ , because he can’t do that without including them in it. “Um, could I….”

“Ah,” Peter says, shifting back a fraction, but not enough, not nearly enough. “Really shouldn’t be interfering with your work, should I? Especially with the others still not back yet…” He gestures for Martin to move past, and traps him in the action.

Martin holds his breath, and takes the slightest of steps. Peter stays exactly where he is, watching with bright interest, and Martin feels the loss of support from Tim’s desk as violently as he’s ever felt the lack of anything in his life. He tries to go a little further, knows that if he could actually breathe, he would be able to smell Peter now. He’s a ship’s captain, Martin remembers. Should carry the sea-scent with him in his clothes.

It feels like it takes him about a decade to reach his own desk, his arms aching when he reaches for the first of the statements. He can still feel Peter’s eyes on him, which he tells himself is mostly because there’s very little else for him to be looking at - he’s already done everything he has to to Tim’s desk (Martin should have done better, should have kept it _safe_ , not forgotten that it was there to lose).

His eyes won’t read the numbers on the front of the statement. He recognises them, knows what they are, but his vision skims over them without anything going in, like forgetting how to count loose change. The Institute’s crest watches him from the cover of the file, and his skin crawls.

“Be seeing you, then,” Peter says, his lips quirking like he knows the words are ones he’s taken from Elias. “If I could have a word with you later, I would like to clarify a few things about the Archives that weren’t in Elias’ notes, and, well, you have been here the longest.”

 _Here the longest_ , Martin thinks, and screws his eyes shut, trying to convince the tears back into their ducts before Peter can see them. It’s a true statement, he supposes, but it doesn’t feel quite as accurate as _only one left_.

The only indication he gets that Peter has left is a low click from underneath a pile of papers on his desk. He finds the tape recorder there, dutifully documenting the worst parts of his life for posterity. He’ll record over it, he thinks, though he knows that he won’t be able to. That the Archives won’t let him. That Jon will hear it.

It’s all right, he decides. There are things that he would want Jon to hear less, and he’s going to hear them, just the same.

* * *

He doesn’t wait for Peter, to have that word. Not that day, nor the one after that, nor the one after that. He doesn’t, and he won’t, stays as far away from Peter as possible. It’s not something that he outright plans or intends, though he can look back and see the patterns of it well enough after a week. He’ll hear or feel something in the Archives shift, he’ll lose his breath, and by the time that he comes back to himself, the phantom imprint of Tim’s desk crackling in his skin, he’ll be halfway to the tunnels.

Martin uses them, now. The cassettes he’s been listening to like a child with a favourite story tape tell him that Tim had done, before, to avoid everyone. They seem to work, once he can bring himself to walk them without being convinced of the worms squirming, soft beneath his shoes, or the distant ache of Michael’s echoed laughter. He barely sees Melanie and Basira, even when they do come back to work, and that’s a price he’s willing to pay.

They leave him post-it notes on his desk, and he replies to them, until Peter starts doing the same. Gentle reminders that they were supposed to have that talk, but he understands if Martin’s too busy - in the meantime, here are some statements for him to record. He draws a smiley face like a computer program, and Martin’s always sure to tear through them.

He scatters the pieces in the tunnels, to help him learn his way. It can be hard, sometimes, to stay on the right path, when something down there calls out to him in a voice that he sometimes forgets not to recognise as Sasha’s.

* * *

Martin watches the tape recorder for a long minute after he stops it. It stays stopped, so he carefully sets down the statement of Nadiya Kempston regarding an empty room in her local library, folding the top of the file back down over it. He smooths one hand over the crease, and wishes he could tear it. That he could crinkle the paper, spill his tea on it, do anything to it except be reverent, but he doesn’t want to summon Peter here as he had Elias.

The statements have all been the same, lately. Different monsters, different experiences, but they’re all ones that speak to him the same, leave him with that same familiar feeling in his chest. It doesn’t fade, even hours after the reading is over, because it’s his as much as it is theirs.

Statement of Ernest Williams, regarding his doorbell. Statement of Milton Hay, regarding what he had hoped to be cold callers. Statement of Seren Knightley, regarding an incident with the queue in her local Waterstones. One alone, aching person after another.

Martin gets up to take the file back to its box, despite the heaviness in his limbs as the post-statement exhaustion sets in. On the way, he stops off in the 2000s section, and picks out the statements of Jackson Matthews, regarding the webs in his shed, and of Leon Cross, regarding the number of legs centipedes are supposed to have.

He knows what it’ll do to him, to record these ones too. He isn’t the Archivist, and even Jon shouldn’t be recording more than one in a day. But they’ll put something else in him, just for a short while. Let him feel, for as long as they last, like he’s not going to reach the end of that line of assigned statements, and find the empty form waiting for his own.

He can sleep in the tunnels again, he decides. Better that than the safe room, where Peter has a key to the lock. And he knows that at the place where he can only just make out the edges of it, the Sasha monster’s voice is almost soothing.

* * *

This time, the tape recorder’s just behind the vase of fake plastic flowers. Last time, it had been in the drawer on the bedside table. Before that, behind the door, just shy of the turning circle. There’s always a tape recorder. Martin can rely on that as much as he can rely on every part of his visits to Jon, a hated fixed point that he can’t give up.

He slots it carefully into his bag the same way he’d done all the others, to take back to the Institute. He’ll leave it in Jon’s office, in case he wants to review the tapes once he gets back, though he’ll probably consider it a waste of his time. From what Martin can tell by fast-forwarding through them, checking for anything that might indicate a change in Jon’s condition, they’ve never recorded. There’ll be a new one, the next time he visits. He doesn’t know who’s leaving them, and knows better than to assume that anyone is.

When he reaches for the zipper on the bag, his hand finds a small turtle keyring, and stills. Sasha had bought it for him, some piece of tourist trap tat from one of her rare holidays, and it must have been the real Sasha, even if the one handing it to him in his memory isn’t. There’s another one inside, sitting safe and secure with his keys and his penknife, in a different colour. It had fallen out of the still mostly-untouched box of Tim’s things when he’d been moving it, and in his bag ever since. He’s not sure if they’re supposed to make him feel better, but the idea of unclipping them makes him feel sick, so there they stay.

Martin does the zip up so that his own one sits inside, safe from any careless knocks, and wonders if Jon had got one, too. Sasha was certainly the only one who would have been able to give him something like that, or, Martin thinks she was, anyway. He would ask, but questions only ever make it more obvious that Jon doesn’t answer.

He settles into the chair, trying not to notice that it hasn’t moved since he was last there, and digs out his phone, looking for something to talk about. Usually, he reads to him, but he’s run out of books, and hasn’t had time to go looking for any more. He doesn’t want to tell him about the Institute - Basira had been quiet, yet another straw-grasping lead on Daisy turned out to be nothing, Melanie had been more vicious than usual when she’d last phoned, to telling him that there was no word from the police about Elias’ case, Peter hadn’t left him a note that morning.

He ends up on the Battersea website’s Meet the Dogs page, more because he’s got it bookmarked than because he thinks Jon will like it - quite the opposite, though he’d given up on trying to rile him back to wakefulness when the first six discredited statements he’d tried hadn’t worked. He reads staffie after greyhound after lurcher, and knows he’ll run out of animals before Jon wakes up, even if he trawls every animal shelter website that he’s ever been on. Jon’s been not waking up for a long time, and Martin knows for a fact that there have been longer comas, longer periods of unconsciousness, but the measures of time that he reads on the internet are in a different language to the hours that he spends sitting at Jon’s bedside. He can’t understand them.

The internet connection isn’t great, and he’s waiting for a terrier cross’ page to load when he hears it. A faint, familiar click, and not coming from his bag. Must be a second one, this time, he thinks, and sets his phone down to check the room again. Starts with the drawers in the bedside table, and he must lose the sound of the door somewhere in their scraping.

“Hello, Martin.”

Martin trips over his own feet trying to turn too quickly, and it’s only a wildly waving hand finding the edge of Jon’s bed that stops him from falling. He pushes himself back up in time to see Peter close the door behind him. He smiles at Martin, but Martin makes no effort to return it, circling back around the bed as quickly as he can, trying to put himself between Peter and Jon. Peter lets him, doesn’t move any further into the room.

“What do you want?” Martin demands. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I have been telling you that we needed to have a chat, Martin.” Peter seems to be trying to look disappointed, but his face doesn’t quite find the expression. “I know you’ve been busy, but I did really want to see you, and I knew you’d come here. Can’t stay away, can you?”

“Sure,” Martin says. “We can talk, somewhere else, there’s a coffee place downstairs, if you want-”

“You don’t have to defend him from me,” Peter says. His eyes should waver towards Jon as he talks about him, but they stay fixed on Martin. “As interested as I am in his progress, it’s more… a duty.”

“Right,” Martin says, though it’s far from it. “But I’d rather-”

“I’m sure you would.” Peter cuts him off again, fingers twitching at his side as though he’s quelling the urge to hold them up to forestall any other protests. “Really, in here is fine. Better than fine.”

“No, no, it’s _not_!” Martin snaps, his throat aching at a volume it hasn’t attempted in months. The part of him still interested in self-preservation drags him back a pace, trying to keep him out of the range of the monster he’s just shouted at.

“It’s not,” he says again, more levelly.

Peter considers him for a long moment, and then makes up the ground in one smooth stride. Then there’s another, and another, and Martin stumbles back again in response, trying to keep the distance intact.

“What did you want to talk about?” Martin throws the question out in front of him, a desperate attempt at diversion. “About the Archives, wasn’t it?”

“I have all the information I need about the Archives now,” Peter says. The backs of Martin’s legs hit Jon’s bed. “As much as I would have liked to hear it from you, your colleagues were - well, they weren’t happy to talk, exactly, but they did so with the minimum of murder attempts, which I’m given to understand is more than they afforded Elias, so I’m counting it as a success.”

“I don’t understand,” Martin says, his voice stumbling too now, vowels and consonants blurring as he struggles to get the question out before Peter reaches him, as though that would save him the same way it would Jon. “If you don’t want to talk about the Archives, then why do you-”

Peter doesn’t stop this time, the way he had when he’d trapped Martin against Tim’s desk. He keeps coming, until Martin would have been able to count every stitch on his jacket, past that point, and then he’s kissing him.

Martin doesn’t move. The parts of his brain that know how to do that, that can send the impulse down his spine and make it obeyed, have become unmoored. Peter’s tongue tests Martin’s lips, and he lets him, because his thoughts have been shocked too ice-water still for him to do anything else. Peter breathes out into his mouth, a long sigh that feels almost like relief, and one of his hands snakes around to grip his hair, holding him in place. It lasts long enough that his breathing goes desperate, but the sensations of Peter’s lips and tongue and teeth are louder in his head than the need for oxygen. He knows he’s already crying, can feel the motion of his tears as they follow the barrier of Peter’s other hand, that’s come to rest on his cheek, a parody of a lover’s.

When he finally pulls back, Martin’s mind snaps, and he yanks away from him, tries to twist so that he can have a clear line of sight to the door. He remembers that he won’t take it, that if he does he’s leaving Jon undefended, just as Peter catches a handful of his jumper and hauls him back, his back knocking painfully into the bedpost.

“Stop.” Martin tries to reach for Peter’s hand, so that he can get it off him, but his stomach turns violently, balking at the idea of contact. “Please, just, don’t-”

“I have been enjoying feeling you read those statements about me,” Peter says, taking a firmer grip on the back of Martin’s neck. “Really, I have, I look forward to you reading more, but-”

“Let me go,” Martin pleads, flinching as Peter’s other hand starts to pull at the hem of his jumper. “Please, I don’t-”

“ _Martin_ ,” Peter says, chiding, voice still smooth and unbothered. Martin tries to break free again, but Peter just uses his own momentum to shove him into the wall and pin him there, arms tangled in a confusion of sleeves. He kisses him again, and there’s a small noise that Martin thinks must be him, because it’s in the same key as the rushing in his chest that’s trying to burst his lungs, but it’s muffled in the crush of Peter’s mouth on his. There’s a cool touch against his ribs, fingers pushing up under his shirt.

“Stop,” Martin tries, pulling his head back so that it knocks into the wall. “Mr Lukas-”

Peter must taste his pleas and his panic, somewhere at the back of his tongue, and he swallows them like he does everything else. A hand presses between Martin’s legs, gives him an experimental squeeze, and Martin cries out, trying to drown out the rush of heat that curls through him like blood in water.

Peter breaks the kiss, withdraws his face just far enough that he’d be able to focus on Martin properly.

“No one’s coming,” he tells him, like it’s cereal packet trivia. “You can scream, if you want. But no one’s going to come. And it’s not that there’s no one to hear. It’s just that they wouldn’t come. Not for you. You know that, I know you know that. I can taste it on you. You’ve lost everyone who ever cared enough to.”

Martin’s eyes find Jon over Peter’s shoulder, still sleeping.

“Don’t-” he manages, but then he’s been knocked sideways, an impact from Peter’s fist still ringing in his head, and the world swims as he’s dragged towards Jon’s bed. He tries to dig his heels in, tries going limp, tries to rip himself free, but he ends up there anyway, Peter holding him face down against the neatly folded sheets.

There’s a long moment of still, and he can hear the tape recorder turning its reels, faint and steady. He can just make out the shape of it, an irregularity under the covers, just next to Jon’s chest.

 _Please turn off_ , he thinks, but it doesn’t, and it won’t, because the sparks of fear spitting through his chest at the idea of Jon ever hearing this is exactly what Beholding is, what it feeds on.

Then it’s all movement again, and the recorder is drowned out by the sound of Peter’s breath in his ear, quickened now, as he moves Martin’s clothes out of his way, fingertips wandering across his skin.

“Not here,” Martin finds himself saying, his voice wretched in a way that he wishes he could believe sounded nothing like him. He presses his face into the covers, trying to distort it. “Please, I’ll do whatever you want, just not here.”

“Why?” Peter murmurs. He strokes a hand through Martin’s hair, and then wrenches his face back around to give him a full view of Jon’s empty face. “Are you worried about him? He’s not there.”

He tries to turn his head back, but Peter won’t let him. He lashes out with an elbow, struggling, but Peter just snaps his arm sideways. Bone cracks. Martin doesn’t hear himself scream, his head too flooded with pain, but there’s a hot damp around his mouth on the blankets that tells him that he did.

“Not here,” Martin whispers. Peter doesn’t even bother to respond now. Keeps one hand in his hair, so that he keeps looking at what hurts him most, at what makes him most aware of that void where Jon and Tim and Sasha should have been, at what makes him feel the way that Peter likes him to feel.

He lets his vision blur, and tries to push his awareness forward to the point when this will be over, but then Peter pushes his fingers into him, testing, and he blinks, bringing Jon back into sharp clarity.

Martin wants him to wake up. Wants him to save him, somehow, though he could hardly expect Jon to be able to fend Peter off even at full health. Wants him to wake up, and do _something_. Wants him never to wake up again, never have to know any of this.

It doesn’t matter what he wants. Peter’s lips are at his neck now, breathing him in. He hums in response to whatever noises Martin makes, flexes his fingers, and probably feels Martin lifting his hips in response better than Martin does.

He’s still pleading with him, he thinks. Offering anything, everything, just to have it not be _here_. The fingers withdraw, and for a moment he thinks that that’s it, that Peter’s stopped, that he’s going to agree and the next time Martin will have to worry about this is when he’ll be on his knees in Peter’s office. His chest surges, unable to contain the stupid hope of it, and then Peter thrusts into him, so roughly that Martin knows he’s screaming, that there’s nothing else he could be doing.

Peter talks to him, as he fucks him. Martin tries not to hear or understand any of it, but enough sinks in for him to know that it is and isn’t the usual sort of nonsense that people say during sex. He’ll swing from telling Martin that he’s perfect into a tangent about how unreasonable it was of Elias to want him to promise not to touch.

Martin remembers, eventually, that he can close his eyes, so he does. Peter either isn’t aware or doesn’t care anymore, his thrusts settling into a slow rhythm. He tries to be somewhere else, something else, but the blunt force of Peter’s cock where it stretches him open, the pleasure burning itself through the pain, keep him trapped inside himself.

Peter comes, finally, hot and bright inside him in a way that he should not be, and then he’s tucking his head down against the side of Martin’s neck, kissing at his feverish pulse.

“There,” he says, and the only volume to his voice is rawness. Martin knows that he’ll be hearing it in his head for as far forward as he’ll have thoughts, easier and more indelible than his friends’ voices, no matter how many tapes of them he wears out from listening to.

He lies there, unable to work out whether or not he’s come himself, hating the possibility as much as he hates the way that the press of Peter’s lips makes his skin tingle, until Peter finally stands, leaving Martin cold from the lack of him. He hates that too, but he doesn’t move until Peter’s rolling him over and dragging him up to kiss him again. There’s no desperation to it now, just a long, languid acknowledgement of the fact that Martin belongs to him now, a promise of more to come.

“Well then,” he says, all back to normal, refastening his trousers with his free hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow - and I trust that I will. I’m willing to keep our business to the Institute from now on, assuming that’s what you would prefer.” He strokes Martin’s cheek, then leans in to kiss his forehead. There’s a dizzied laugh against his hair, and then he’s falling back down onto the bed as Peter leaves.

It takes Martin a full minute to understand that the lump against his chest is one of Jon’s feet. He recoils, curling away from him, but his arm seems to crack with the motion. He hurts.

He should probably get to a hospital, he thinks, and manages four breaths of laughter before it devolves into sobbing.


End file.
